[dragonwriter]

The article you links to reports that Statehood won the 2012 referendum (majority voted no to current status, and Statehood got a majority of votes for the alternative status), which Congress chose to ignore, and overwhelmingly won the single-stage 2017 referendum.

So, no, the issue is not “they have had opportunities to begin the process to fully opt in and haven't done so”.

[umanwizard]

The 2017 """referendum""" was a push poll, not a binding referendum or even a fair and objective opinion poll.

[dragonwriter]

None of the referenda have been binding referenda (which Congress could provide for, but has not) and most of them except the 2012 two-stage one have been structured, (often at the direction or request of the US federal government) to avoid a clear win for any option other than status quo (including the 2017 one, which had an additional option added at the request of the Trump administration to split voters opposed to the current status.)

Of course, the 2017 referendum was only held at all because the Statehood won by the terms of the 2012 referendum, and the federal government ignored it and the requests by the elected bodies of the government of Puerto Rico to abide by it.

The idea that Puerto Rico is not a state because the people of Puerto Rico have not availed themselves of the opportunity to choose to become one is false.

[plandis]

What do you mean it wasn't fair or objective?

[jldugger]

Opinion polling put Statehood at 52%, with a 3.2% margin of error. Sounds close, but the referendum had 3 choices, and neither were very close.

It seems like those opposed to Statehood realized they'd lose as they split the vote, and ran a boycott campaign, effectively turning it into a yes/no vote on statehood, with the fringe benefit of claiming all non-voters as on their side, which going by 2012, is a free 20 percent of the vote.

For better or worse, there's not really an objective way to evaluate this state of affairs =/

[dragonwriter]

We could do what we do with every other election, and treat nonvotes as irrelevant to the validity of the outcome unless they result from people being improperly prevented from voting rather than voluntarily abstaining, whether in protest or otherwise.

[jldugger]

Obviously "what we do" is influenced by Congressional makeup and how PR alters it, but that's pretty much what the diff between a binding and non-binding referendum means in practice.

And maybe forcing the issue is a bit too colonial, optically.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, it would be a bit “too colonial” to respect the results of either of the last two status referenda, or the multiple requests of the elected governing bodies of PR to abide by the previous one; clearly, maintaining Puerto Rico’s subject status with no vote in the federal government that it is subject to despite all those things is the non-colonial thing to do.

Or...maybe that's the exact opposite of what is going on.